Mother Africa in Europe:
Mme. Diop of Présence Africaine
- by the Editor

When you meet her, as I did recently, you first notice the warmth of her eyes and then the strong nose and lips that give her that decisive, no-nonsense look. While others her age have long since retired, she still goes in most days to oversee a legacy of what was a turning point in the cultural history of Africa and the Black world, of which her husband Alioune was a part.

Fundamental Source of Ideas
A glance at the crowded bookshelves reveals a fundamental source of ideas. Titles abound on Pan-African opposition to slavery and colonialism and the rising tide of aspirations of Black people in Africa and the Diaspora to be free. Recognition is given to W.E.B.DuBois, a black American social scientist, who in the late 19th century theorised the concept of "African civilisation" and defended the values of African self-determination, self-respect, and self-reliance. These principles were evident in the Universal Negro Improvement Association and "Back to Africa" movement of the Jamaican Marcus Garvey. Generations of intellectuals and political figures from America, Europe and the colonies rallied to Pan African Congresses, ceremonies and exhibitions sponsored in European cities from 1900 to 1945.

Black writers bursting upon the literary scene in the early 20th century were another influential source. In 1920 Rene Maran received the Prix Goncourt for his work Batouala Claude McKay was heralded for his classic work Banjo. Léon Damas wrote Pigments in 1937. All these works resonate in the mid-years when Aimé Césaires's Cahier d'un Retour au pays natal won wide acclaim and Richard Wright's Native Son and Black Boy brought the plight of Blacks in white America to world attention.

Clear evidence of these strands of thought and action can be seen in scores of tracts and journals launched by young and notable personalities in passionate defence of the "cause negre". Unashamedly fond of the Harlem Renaissance writers and artists, they longed to empower blacks to write about themselves. There was the Revue du Monde Noir in 1931, created in the drawing rooms of the sisters Paulette and Jane Nardal, and the radical challenges issued in the Légitime Défense in 1932 and L'Étudiant Noir in 1934, and Tropiques edited by Aimé Césaire between 1941-45.

Then, as Mme. Diop recalls, came the genius of Alioune Diop and Présence Africaine as the new postwar world emerged from fascism and nazism. Diop, himself born in Sénégal, and a brilliant professor of philosophy, opened a debate in the heart of the French psyche. In his view, European liberation and the recovery of French republican values of liberty, equality and justice must coincide with the restoration of the sovereignty of African peoples and cultures. His contemporaries in the 1950s: Cheikh Anta Diop in Nations nègres et Culture and Aimé Césaire's Discours sur le colonialisme echoed these feelings. French partisans, intellectuals and anthropologists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Balandier, Theodore Monod, Michel Leiris, Andre Gide, and Jacques Howlett lent their support.

Niam n'goura
With Diop at the lead Présence Africaine expressed all the energies and talents of young African intellectuals, students and emigrants to Paris. The inaugural volume aimed to "Tell and Last" or "Niam n'goura", as implied in a Toucouleur proverb. Collaboration was sought with "all men of goodwill - white, yellow, black - seeking to aid us in the definition of African originality and its involvement in the modern world".

Classic Pan-African goals were revitalised with the formation of the Society for African Culture (SAC) in 1956 and gained the support of UNESCO. Diop and his colleagues Aimé Césaire, Dr. Jean Price-Mars, first chancellor of the University of Haiti and Eric Williams of Trinidad, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, sought "to unite by links of solidarity and friendship all men of culture of the Black world". These themes recurred in the 1st World Congress of Black Writers and Artists sponsored by SAC in Paris in 1956. Diop and his fellow blacks from Europe, Africa and the USA gathered together in the courtyard of the Amphithéâtre Descartes, "temple of white wisdom", at the Sorbonne to mark what they called "the dawn of the intellectuals of the Black world".

In step with new forms of literary and liberation philosophies of the period, Diop and his partisans urged that "Black culture must become a power for liberation and solidarity as well as an expression of our personality". Mme Diop recalls that all the great figures passed by the shop at rue des Ecoles, including the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, the philosopher Cheikh Anta Diop, the poet Mario de Andrade, and the writer and film maker Sembene Ousmane. Présence Africaine published the words of Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Sékou Touré, and Malcolm X among others. Congresses of Black Writers and Artists held in Rome 1959, Dakar 1966, Algiers 1969 and Lagos 1977 attracted support by African Americans such as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Katherine Dunham, and Richard Wright.

Black Poetics and Politics
The name of Alioune Diop who died in 1980 is little known today. Yet the heady mixture of black poetics and politics designed by his band of scholar-activists remains potent. He was a symbol of what W.E.B.DuBois would have called the "talented tenth", that is individuals among Blacks who by virtue of their abilities, vision or education should provide leadership. In this vanguard role, self-knowledge and the command of scientific facts and technology would have equal importance with culture and beauty.

"I Must Go On"
When asked her view of the heavy weight history has placed upon her shoulders, Mme Diop who was recently honoured in Dakar and New York, is self-effacing, as always. "I must go on," she says, "too great a sacrifice has been made by others". Niam n'goura must have strengthened her efforts to convene the Présence Africaine 50th anniversary celebrations held in Paris in December 1997. Visibly moved, she heard tributes from Federico Mayor, director general of UNESCO, Léopold Sédar Senghor, African member of the Academie Française, and Daniel Maximin of the French ministry of culture. With fellow celebrants from Africa, Europe, the USA and the Caribbean she bowed silently as a libation was poured by the Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian scholar-militant and Nobel Prize winner for literature.

In her seventies now and still determined, you will find her daily, with co-workers Mesdames Lucie, Bantoue and Katherine, supervising the bookshop and publishing house on rue des Ecoles, the Parisian avenue of learning, between the College de France and the Université de Jussieu. Présence Africaine Éditions, her legacy, and ours too, is the oldest and most prestigious journal of Black scholars founded on European soil.